Sanity Required In Executions

High Court Calls Death Penalty For Insane `Mindless`

June 27, 1986|By Timothy J. McNulty, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, in striking down a Florida procedure for evaluating a prisoner`s sanity in a capital punishment case, for the first time Thursday affirmed the common law assumption that it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute the insane.

In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that a condemned prisoner who seeks to avoid execution by claiming to be insane is entitled to a mental evaluation by a neutral body or a court and not by government appointed doctors. In this ruling, the justices struck down a Florida evaluation practice under the provisions of the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, which forbids ``cruel and unusual punishment.`` It described executing the insane as ``the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance.``

The justices also specifically ruled, in a separate 7-2 vote, that the state of Florida cannot execute convicted killer Alvin Ford unless his sanity has been determined in a new and impartial hearing where his lawyers can present their own doctors` reports.

``This is what is most important,`` said Henry Schwarzschild, director of the American Civil Liberties Union`s capital punishment project. ``The court is telling us how to determine if a person is sane enough to be executed. Who says he`s sane?``

In issuing the rulings, the court pointed out that none of the 38 states with capital punishment laws has ever allowed the insane to be killed and that both the English and American tradition for centuries has been to not execute insane persons.

Until now, however, the Supreme Court was never called upon to decide whether the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids it. ``Today we keep faith with our common-law heritage in holding that it does,`` Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in the majority opinion.

Ford, 32, was convicted of killing Florida policeman Walter Ilyankoff during a 1974 restaurant robbery. He was sentenced to death that year and his lawyers acknowledged that Ford was sane at the time of the crime.

In early 1982, Ford began to change his normal behavior.

Two defense psychiatrists found Ford to be a paranoid schizophrenic and unable to understand why he was to be killed.

Three other psychiatrists, appointed by Florida Gov. Bob Graham, interviewed Ford for half an hour in 1983 and then declared him mentally competent to die. Ford`s own doctors and attorneys submitted their reports but they were not told if their opinions would be considered. Then Gov. Graham, without public comment or explanation, signed Ford`s execution order, which was appealed through state and federal courts and eventually to the Supreme Court.

Ford`s lawyers in the Palm Beach County public defender`s office argued that the governor`s order violated Ford`s right to due process under the 14th Amendment.

The justices reversed lower court decisions and said the governor, who appointed the experts and whose subordinates are responsible for every stage of prosecution, is not neutral enough to decide Ford`s sanity or insanity.

Justice Marshall wrote that protection against cruel and unusual punishment forbids executing the insane. Reaching back into the history of English common law, he explained:

`` . . . the natural abhorrence civilized societies feel at killing one who has no capacity to come to grips with his own conscience or deity is still vivid today. And the intuition that such an execution simply offends humanity is evidently shared across this nation.``

Marshall, joined by Justices William J. Brennan, Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell and John Paul Stevens, said there are many reasons for not killing the insane.

``One explanation is that the execution of an insane person simply offends humanity, another that it provides no example to others and thus contributes nothing to whatever deterrence value is intended to be served by capital punishment,`` the majority declared.